The Search Party

The Search Party made one extremely obscure psychedelic album in the past due ’60s, Montgomery Chapel, which likely was pressed in an exceedingly small quantity. That alone ensured it became a collector’s item among psychedelic completists, but it isn’t noteworthy solely because of its rarity. Therefore endeavors went, it had been fairly reputable, if — like many little-known rings of that time period, both with and without regular record offers — quite derivative of Western Coast psychedelic rock and roll generally, and of Jefferson Aircraft and Nation Joe & the Fish-styled SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA psychedelic bands specifically. Like those rings, they boasted a bent for minor-key melodies; just like the Aircraft, they break up the singing tasks among a higher, strong woman vocalist and man vocals; and like Nation Joe & the Seafood, they used a darkly lively, slightly macabre body organ sound. Their tracks, performing, and playing weren’t almost on the amount of the Aircraft or Seafood, nor do they possess the laughter or wit that lots of such quality SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA bands ensured expressing as needed stability for the much more serious and experimental moods. Certainly, their materials got an over-reverential quality that tapped in to the hippie attitude at its most earnestly pretentious. Yet, the LP got a ghostly sincerity that got some merit, and produces some enjoyable if erratic hearing. Not much info offers circulated about the group, but it has been created that they shifted to Sacramento, CA, from Wisconsin, a concept supported from the listing of get in touch with addresses in both places for the LP’s back again cover. Through the brief liner records on the trunk cover, it is also deduced that Nicholas T. Freund — who had written much (though not absolutely all) from the materials, and created the recording — was the many musically influential person in the group, though it isn’t entirely particular whether he in fact was among the bandmembers, as no instrumental or vocal responsibilities are acknowledged to them (because they are to four additional people). The records also intimate how the album was relatively religiously motivated, although lyrics just have periodic tenuous references that may carry this out. Still, additional issues in the records point to some kind of spiritual connection: Nicholas T. Freund can be described at one stage as “Rev. Nicholas Freund,” as well as the SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA Theological Seminary is usually thanked for the usage of Montgomery Chapel, which appears likely to possess influenced the LP name. Whatever the true as well as perhaps forever-lost tale is usually, the record — which, once again based on the liner records, took six weeks and $2,000 to record — can be an above-average psychedelic small-pressing work.